Thursday, May 17, 2018

Hurray for ADUs, but some folks would just want less population growth

I like talking to many different kinds of people and I often change my tune, a bit, depending on who I am talking to. A while ago, I mentioned to a friend that Bellingham City Council passed the ordinance allowing auxiliary dwelling units to built in more single family zones. I was happy, but this friend was less enthused. He expressed regret that there was a blanket change to all residential zones. Rather than trying to defend the ADU vote, I changed my tune a bit and said that if population growth were to significantly slow down, there would be less need to build more homes. He agreed with that. He also liked hearing my slightly tongue in cheek comment that if more people were gay, we wouldn't have as much growth.

I'm glad there are more and more single and child free people here in the western world at least. The third world still has more population growth which we get some of via immigration.

Some people think it's selfish to embrace single living, but ironically, the best thing we can do for kids of the future is to leave them a world that isn't overcrowded. We also can do better to accommodate the population, like allowing more auxiliary dwelling units, in my opinion. Also there are lots of new apartment buildings being built in Bellingham's denser zones. Multi family zones. Lots of people keep wanting to move to Bellingham. There are several ways to solve this problem. Less population, yes. More density, yes. Maybe all of the above.